Frege, Gottlob (1848—1925)
German philosopher, mathematician, and logician whose work had a strong influence on twentieth-century linguistics and language philosophy. Born in Wismar in Pomerania, Frege studied at Jena and Göttingen. He worked for most of his life in the mathematics department at Jena. He never published a monograph on philosophy in his own lifetime and it was only thanks to influential admirers like Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, and Wittgenstein, Ludwig that his philosophical work became widely known. His first major work was Begriffsschrift (1879), translated as Conceptual Notation and other Writings (1972), which set out to create a formal notational system for logic. In spite of a very poor initial reception (it was dismissed by the leading figures of the time), it has nonetheless had a tremendous influence on the development of the field of mathematical logic ever since. His real masterpiece, though, came a few years later: Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logische mathematische Untersuchung über der Begriff der Zahl (1884), translated as The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logico-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number (1968). This was met with a similarly hostile response. Frege then turned to problems in the philosophy of language and it was this work which led to him becoming known in critical theory. In particular, it is the distinction between Sinn (sense) and Bedeutung (reference) outlined in the paper ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’ (1892), translated as ‘On Sense and Reference’ (1969), that has proved the most consequential for the development of analytic philosophy. Frege noted that two expressions might have the same point of reference (Bedeutung); his famous example is that of the morning star and the evening star, inasmuch that the morning star and the evening star are in fact one and the same thing, namely the planet Venus, but have a very different sense (Sinn) according to the different expressions. Frege was directly influential on Husserl, Edmund, who as a young scholar wrote a critique of Frege only to be roundly chastised by him in return. In so doing, however, Frege directed him away from the psychologism of Brentano and put him on the road to creating his concept of phenomenology. Further Reading: M. Dummett Frege: Philosophy of Language (1973). A. Kenny Frege: An Introduction to the Founder of Modern Analytic Philosophy (1995). H. Noonan Frege: A Critical Introduction (2001).